This is the start of my journaling every day. I've been having some trouble picturing my future. I spent a bit of time today writing about it. So far it has gone over well. I think my writing is getting better, especially if I write with more emotion. It is still difficult, and I hope that this exercise helps me express my thoughts more naturally with the written word.

Work has been an interesting mix of impact and feeling useless. I've made changes in our processes, given training session, and overall built some more meaningful relationships in the organization. I do feel like when I move forward there is nothing waiting for me afterward. The reactionary nature of my previous employment seems to be continuing in my latest position. With the lack of structure I feel lost at times. I feel that I am not useful. If I am to be governed, I best be with meaning and with an impact.

We shall see what comes of the following weeks as I get closer to moving my family and life to another country. Possibly some clarification and the very least an adventure.

It has been an interesting day!

I had an amazing chat with my best friend who is currently living in another timezone. We don't connect as often as we used to, I guess that is what growing up feels like 😔. Regardless our chat was great! She is always a great source of inspiration for me!

Today someone shared one of my side projects on their own site! It was a great feeling to have someone that interested in what I have been creating! Here is the link

I have been working more on https://flawk.to, it has been slow but I am comfortable with the speed and multiple different angles I am tackling it from. It is also nice/daunting to be learning a who technology from scratch again. Not sure it will be worth it, but it is at least interesting for now.

Work today has not been bad! I have more meetings which usually keeps me busy and a little more engaged. We had a conversation with someone who read the reviews from Glassdoor about our company before excepting our offer. He seems like someone we most definitely want on the team and it will be very disappointing if he chooses not to - although I completely understand and can empathize with his position. During the call I tried to outline that we understand the issues and we are working to fix them. Mentioning that we are looking for people like him to step into the mess for a little while and help us craft a better experience. We shall see what comes of it.

We are above the 10 count now for the number of people who have accepted our offers of employment. Things are starting to come together and I feel like we are catching up on the backlog of positions to fill. Which means we can slow down and look to the future to start crafting a better life at the company for everyone. Obviously I only have an impact in development, but that is a great start. Since we want to shift more of the company into development and away from consulting it will be more meaningful long term to have good development policies and practices.

I am starting to work with someone on flawk. It might work out better now that I am moving a little slower and operating on multiple different plains. It is an experiment, we shall see how it turns out.

I also am working with someone on a side project I am doing that will help me organize myself during all of this hiring. That is moving along well! I am looking forward to using that software and seeing if it improves anything at all.

Some new things for me today, I am thinking about stating a vlog! I am moving my whole family to a different country to perform a new job that could really bring some impact. Not sure how that is going to go, or what medium to product that on but I do think it would suit my personality well.

I have also been thinking about a video course that I will put on youtube! Not exactly sure how long that will take to complete but I am really looking forward to re-writing an application I still believe has some use, and also getting better at my production and post production video skills!

There is currently no good process to handle hiring requisitions, so I just get random emails from random people within the company requesting I hire someone. I want to trust that everything is in order before they filled out the requisition but there has been examples where that has not been the case. So I get some document with only a description of the skills required with no details on the:

• project or type of work
• expected difficulties in the work
• needed catalytic skills
• current structure
• timelines

It is wild to me that we don't employ a stricter system to manage these requests.

Twas a busy day. Didn't get as much as I wanted to accomplished - for myself, or for the company.

There is always tomorrow.

Last night I was realizing that my attitude at home has not been great. My usual happy demeanour has been trending downward. My 2 days of less twitter have given me the space to think more about myself. I do feel like I am getting more confident in who and where I am, but also recognizing the faults I still have to work on. A goal of mine going forward from today is to keep these faults, especially my happiness, at the front of my mind. Hopefully that will be able to bring a big impact to the happiness of my kids and my wife.

Had a couple of interviews today. One was extremely interesting. I had the chance to interview someone with a PhD! That is a first for me. It was a really interesting discussion. I wish I had more time to talk with them about their work and their passion surrounding it. I really admire people who spend time to hone their skills and push through something as difficult as a Masters or Doctorate degree.

I am finding more and more that interviews are super repetitive and they don't give a great understanding of someone. I really want to get to know people during interviews. Whether it is policy or just our current culture, the focus is still too narrow on skills and things related to skills. I am not expecting to be friends with people, but I do expect to help make a positive impact in their lives. I want this position with me to move them forward, closer to where they want to be in their lives and careers. I want to know who people are, so I can be the best manager for them.

It is the end of my day. I stayed 1hr 30m minutes later than I usually do, struggling with excel. I absolutely hate spread sheets. 😡

Late start for me today. I was up early, had to bring the car in, but only got to the office around noon. With this whole COVID-19 situation I have decided to work from home starting on Monday! It will be an interesting experience. The company is allowing us to bring home all of our equipment, which is nice since I recently sold my monitors. I am both looking forward to it, and dreading it. Working from home with 3 kids might be a little distracting.

A good thing about waking up so early and having to sit and wait for a car to be fixed, I managed to fix a bug for someone on Team-img! It was brilliant, a painful bug, but brilliant to fix something directly affecting a consumer.

It was a short day today. But I did move my desk from work to my house for my work at home situation. Other than gouging my wall it was a smooth experience. I am looking forward to working on my remote station, even if it is only temporary!

Here are some photos of my broken wall, and my new setup!

This weekend was nice. Spend some time in the outdoors up at a hunting cabin - didn't do any hunting. Spent some time with family and just generally relaxed. I did make some great headway on flawk.to! Continuing it today working on the flow and the interface for starting and stopping the stream. I would like to get it to a place where I can actually use it to stream rather than OBS! That shouldn't be too far away I don't think. Then it becomes a lot about the UX of the app, then about how we integrate it into the website for viewing. Excited to see where it goes!

Since the gym is closed I had to go for a run today. It was awful. I will continue to run every two days, alternating with my wife. Hopefully it gets better, it just hurts my lungs so much! The cold is not nice to breath in.

First day of remote work and it turned out fine. I had no interviews today. I think when that happens we will see how well this remote situation will work.

Going to have a nice day outside with my family tonight, doing some BBQ!

I completely forgot to post my journal yesterday! This post will therefore contain two days, yesterday and todays entries 😂.

A slower start today. Got some early work done on Flawk Present. Sorted out some of the user flows and worked on the overall data flow and user experience of the app. I really would like to get it out soon! Hopefully with all the time I save commuting I can get moving on this application. I feel it all coming together with the new designs and the Present application. Still a long way to go, but it is getting closer and closer with each step.

Work has been quieter than usual. Not a lot of new interviews and not a lot of hiring activity.

I am taking the time today to review our internal documentation on coding standards and continue working on a proper onboarding flow. With that I am still figuring out how I am going to approach the change management of this organization. Without having worked with the people for very long, or really at all in person, I am finding it hard to insert myself and gain perspective.

Yesterday I had a great conversation about tools with our communities of practice (CoP) leaders. We were talking about our collaboration tools and which ones we have been using throughout the company and which ones we want to double down on and make standard. Because the company was built by acquisitions and up until recently managed as silos there are a lot of tools overlapping. It was interesting to listen to the conversation, it turned mostly into a debate about whos preferred tool was better or contained the features we needed. For me this discussion was about which tools for which jobs. There is going to be overlap, but we should pick the best tool for a specific function. Using a phone texting system for instant messaging and real time collaboration just isn't aligned for me. Pick the right tool for the right job.

I spend most of the night last night working on adding a pro account to Team-img. It is almost complete and I am going to polish it off today. I am also going to start my vlog today. Video number 1. I was hoping it would be a lot more exciting and enticing to follow me with the trip down to Florida, but COVID-19 stood in the way. Maybe that will be interesting enough for now. Only time will tell. That is also assuming I am in any way entertaining 😂.

Busy day! I created my first vlog https://youtu.be/gcIAMetCkt00 ! I updated my youtube channel. Push and prepared the paid versions of Teamimg. Had some calls for work. Over just got things done.

Next on my list, youtube video series on building and launching a product. I am so excited about this! Almost done building the application but I think I could start recording now :D. I am even going to use flawk.to's unfinished present app!

Speaking of flawk. Marko has finished all of the designs. Which is really exciting. That means one step closer to getting it launched! I will have to get to work perfecting the copy and user flows, until then I will return some feedback for Marko and be on my way!

I forgot to post my journal again! It was written, just sitting there all alone! Here is yesterdays content:

So far the day started off well! I took it easy last night, did some reading rather than working and I feel more refreshed today! Rowan, my second son, put his finger up my nose this morning and gave me a nose bleed. Exciting.

I made my first sale for something I made, EVER! I am super excited that I was able to make something that someone saw enough value in that they paid money for it. It makes me so excited 🥳.

Had some good calls this morning for work and a good discussion last night about how I post and talk about work, especially to the public. I think I am figuring it out and pretty sure what I communicate in the future will be more valuable.

Recorded another vlog! I think I will get used to talking to myself! Editing will definitely be hard. My video's will definitely not be smooth until I can find my tripod.

As for today it has been a whirl wind! 🌪 I had a couple of interviews a check in with my boss, and a couple more planning and information gathering phone calls. I did manage to get some time in today to work on the app that I am planning on recording a set of videos on how to build and launch a product with react, next and now! It is almost complete which means this weekend/next week I can begin recording! I have been looking forward to creating a set of informational/educational/instructional videos like this! It is going to be a lot of fun.

This week has been nice to be working from home. The time I save commuting I managed to do a lot of creation, which is what I love. It gives me energy!

I am going to take a break from journaling for the weekend, I might try and film a vlog this weekend, other than that I'll be back Monday!

Yesterdays:

Had a fun weekend! You can see some of what happened here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9T92erdQpU!

Today has already been pretty busy, I've had an interview, worked on getting the pages of my course finalized and edited my vlog! Going to be a busy afternoon but I am excited to get going!

I am failing hard at getting these out on time! Yesterday was a full packed day! A couple of interviews, new directors starting and some nice conversations with some of our new hires. I absolutely love the energy and fresh perspective new people bring to the team! In the next couple of weeks I am going to be reaching out to the remaining new hires just to chat and check in. See if they have any new information to offer!

Today I am going to record some more videos! Hopefully getting a good start on producing at least on video a day, whether it's a vlog or part of my course.

One thing I have noticed with the whole COVID-19 lockdown is that I am happily working alone, but I have left a lot of relationships - from my work colleagues - alone. I used to interact with them daily, not it seems like a significant amount of effort to reach out. I know I should but I get distracted using any second of spare time I have working on any number of personal things. I have to step this up!

Got this launched today! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03VW35Le1lE

Excited about doing the remaining videos! Will do my best to keep them under 10 minutes 😂

Been thinking a lot about how to present myself on video. I am going to try and record two videos at some point this week. One about interviewing, the other will be the second video in the nextjs + react series I am doing. Going to be creating out first page today!

Nothing crazy today. Had a nice lunch with the kids, recorded a vlog over lunch and attended some training. I will finished editing the video and get it posted today then hopefully I will be able to record my second video to build out https://wachstum.space.

Here are the links to the blog post and my vlog!

blog: https://attempts.space/master-the-interview/

video: https://youtu.be/4bAMlMMt-Io

Nothings crazy going on today. Setup my DSLR as my webcam! Which I am excited about for my new youtube videos! I swapped around my desk to get some better lighting conditions and recorded my second of many videos in the nextjs series. About to be on a call with Tom for some updates on Florida. I also pulled a muscle in my back doing a workout. So that is fun.

Call was nice to see everyone. Although it has left me feeling like my position is even less defined that it has been in the past. I want to be moving into creating my own financial independence, not sure how to go about that. But I am thinking it needs to happen sooner rather than later. Especially given the unknowns I am currently facing, mainly related to my job.

Made some progress on flawk! I am making a small focus shift for the product and I have found it invigorating. I am upgrading my internet so I am able to continue to upload videos as well as stream! I attempted to do a stream last night and it didn't work out so well.

I will be recording my next wachstum.space video tomorrow and possibly editing my latest vlog. I don't have a lot of content for it yet. I do, however, want to continue to put up content, maybe on a alternating schedule. My focus this week, however, is on flawk and getting a working version of it done.

Short and sweet today. More progress on Flawk! Feeling good about the direction still. I had to record an episode of from idea to launch again because the audio was bad! I think the second time around felt rushed to me but I wonder if since it was shorter and more concise if people will like it. I will edit it and post it tomorrow hopefully!

Work has some things going on as well. Apparently some news coming for me tomorrow, not sure what to expect - hopefully good things.

Launched my 4th video for from idea to launch. Working on Flawk and the TypeAhead. Ran into some snags with Mongoose and text indexes, but figured it out after an hour or so.

Feeling a little overwhelmed today. Taking a few breaks which makes me feel more overwhelmed.

Got the creation screen done. Now moving on to the backend and the single event page. Will have to start tomorrow since tonight I will be spending some time with my family.